she carried a pistol instead of Secret Service protection
“After the head of the Secret Service found I was not going to allow an agent to accompany me everywhere, he went one day to Louis Howe [FDR’s secretary], plunked a revolver down on the table and said ‘Well, all right, if Mrs. Roosevelt is going to drive around the country alone, at least ask her to carry this in the car.’”
Eleanor’s autobiography
“When Roosevelt defied death threats by the Ku Klux Klan to travel to Tennessee in 1958 to attend a civil rights workshop, she and the woman who picked her up at the Nashville airport drove to the conference with ‘a loaded pistol on the front seat between them.’”
her biographer Allida Black
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Eleanor Roosevelt, “You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys to a More Fulfilling Life”
Annie Oakley taught more than 15,000 women how to use a gun
Sixth of nine children ( born Phoebe Ann Mosey )(Phoebe Ann Moses)
began trapping before the age of seven
began shooting and hunting by age eight
1865 – Her skill paid off the mortgage on her mother’s farm (when Annie was 15)
1872 – Annie ran away from the home where she was “employed”
1881 – Thanksgiving Day, Baughman & Butler shooting act was being performed in Cincinnati – Frank E. Butler placed a $100 bet he could beat any local “fancy shooter”, Butler lost the match and the bet
1882 – Oakley married Frank Butler
1885 – They joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show ( She earned more than any performer, except for “Buffalo Bill” Cody himself )
1889 – Paris Exposition
1898 – Oakley promoted women in combat ops for the US Military
1894 – Performed in the eleventh film made = The “Little Sure Shot of the Wild West,”(the 11th movie made on earth, by the inventor of motion pictures)
1902 – left the Buffalo Bill show for good
1902 – The Western Girl a stage play written especially for her
1904 – A newspaper reporter wrote a libelous article, Oakley spent 6 years dealing with libel lawsuits (lost only one of 55)
1912 – Annie Oakley House built in Cambridge, Maryland Oakley collected less in judgments than her legal expenses
Oakley continued to set records into her sixties
1922 – She hit 100 clay targets in a row from 16 yards (at age 62)
Oakley was involved in extensive philanthropy for women’s rights and the support of young women she knew
1922 – a car accident forced her to wear a steel brace on her right leg
1925 – visited to the Grand American (Shotgun shoot) and “breaks a 97”
1925 – she died of pernicious anemia in Greenville, Ohio at the age of 66
1925 – Butler was so grieved by her death he stopped eating and died 18 days later
Oakley’s ashes were placed in one of her prized trophies and laid next to Butler’s body in his coffin
After her death, it was discovered that she spent her entire fortune on her family and her charities
1981 – Annie Oakley Committee placed a stone-mounted plaque in the vicinity of her birth site
1996 – The Annie Oakley House added to the National Register of Historic Places
Trapshooting Hall of Fame
National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame
National Women’s Hall of Fame
Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame
New Jersey Hall of Fame.
Oakley’s personal possessions, performance memorabilia, and firearms are on permanent exhibit in the Garst Museum and the National Annie Oakley Center in Greenville, Ohio
Oakley believed that women should learn to use a gun for the empowering image that it gave
I would like to see every woman know how to handle guns as naturally as they know how to handle babies.
Oakley believed strongly that it was crucial for women to learn how to use a gun, as not only a form of physical and mental exercise, but also to defend themselves
1885 – first African American woman to become a U.S. postal service Star Route mail carrier
1885 – 1889 – 1st Star Route
1889 – 1893 – 2nd Star Route
1894 – opened a restaurant in Cascade, MT Fields would serve food to anyone, whether they could pay or not (closed in 10 months)
1895 – at 60+ years old, Fields was hired as a mail carrier This made her the second woman & first African American woman to work for the U.S. Postal Service At 60 yrs old, she was the fastest applicant to hitch a team of six horses If the snow was too deep for her horses, Fields delivered the mail in snowshoes
hard-drinking, quick-shooting mail carrier sported two guns fended off an angry pack of wolves with her rifle
1910 – When the local motel was sold, a stipulation to the transaction was that all meals for Mary Fields would be offered free of charge for the rest of her life
1912 – her laundry business and her home burned down, the townspeople gathered and built her a new home.
1914 – her funeral was one of the largest the town had ever seen
1959 – actor Gary Cooper met Fields when he was a child, and wrote an account of his memories of her in Ebony magazine
2015-2016 – AMC series, “Hell On Wheels”, featured in 5 episodes, Fields is played by Amber Chardae Robinson
“She drinks whiskey, and she swears, and she is a republican, which makes her a low, foul creature.”
schoolgirl’s essay writing about “Stagecoach Mary”
“Born a slave somewhere in Tennessee, Mary lived to become one of the freest souls ever to draw a breath, or a .38.”
